How important is social mobility for innovation and growth?

Raj Chetty is a rising star in economics. After graduating from Harvard at the age of 23, he became an assistant professor at Berkeley, where he got tenure only four years later. Since then he won the John Bates Clark Medal in 2013 and moved to Stanford in 2015. His latest research is concerned with the question of upward mobility in society and how it affects innovation and economic growth. The video below is a recording of a talk Raj gave at LSE summarizing a paper he wrote together with John Van Reenen and others. This is cutting-edge research but, at the same time, very accesible and Raj does a great job in bringing home the key messages by merely presenting graphs and descriptive statistics. So if you have 45 minutes to spare (the rest of the video is Q&A) you should have a look.

Alright, if 45 minutes are too long and you prefer the more “millennial style” of presenting, here is a TEDx talk by Raj on social mobility in the US (but without a focus on innovation).